Yesterday the 3rd Circuit addressed a claim under the FLSA that a county had willfully denied employees overtime as required by the FLSA. The court affirmed a lower court directed verdict denying willfulness. The importance of a finding on willfulness goes to the amount of damages and reduces those damages significantly. In this case, many employees of the county were working multiple part time jobs and the county was calculating their pay based on each job, not the combined hours. The county realized its mistake and made corrections. Employees sued for past wages under the FLSA. The 3rd Circuit determined that there was no showing that the County knew in advance of the violations that it was violating FLSA therefor its action was not "willful". If that were not the case with respect to some of the violations, in the alternative, the court concluded that the County did not have specific intent to violate the law. (My words, you need to read the case for a better analysis.) The lower court used the lodestar approach to determine attorneys fees and awarded fees much lower than had been requested. The 3rd Circuit affirmed the lower court's approach. Nice win for the county. http://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/153895p.pdf Charles W. Thompson, Jr. Executive Director and General Counsel International Municipal Lawyers Association, Inc. 51 Monroe Street Suite 404 Rockville, Maryland 20850 202-466-5424 x7110 Direct: 202-742-1016 Cell: 240-876-6790 Plan ahead: IMLA's Annual Conference October 14- October 18, 2017 - Niagara, Ontario, Canada (Passport required) To register, go to: http://imla.org/events/conferences#registration IMLA's Annual Seminar and Section 1983 Defense Conference - April 20- April 23, 2018 Washington, DC